Wednesday, March 11, 2009

How Students Can Survive University Life

By Nick Sanders

Studying in an academic institution becomes competitive and some students don't know what they need to survive the first few weeks, In their attempts to survive many students will face a number of obstacles that they will need to overcome, which can be placed into 7 top tips.

1. Balance your life - the most challenging problem that many students face is balancing different activities in their new lifestyle. As a student, you will need to balance your studies, sports, resting and eating. Most students will commonly forget to eat and others will not realise that they were expected at football practice 3 hours ago. Not having a balance of all of these things will cause you to act sluggish and not give each of the different tasks your full attention - you should always make sure you have relaxation time.

2. Attitude - you should look to maintain a positive attitude when at university. If you don't quite make it when completing a task you should look on it as a learning curve and decide where you need to improve - things can always turn out worse. Look on the positive side and this will reduce the amount of stress that you are under. Also, you should have a positive attitude towards forming new friendships with people as this is always a good experience.

3. Adjustment to the Environment - the most difficult job for a student is to adjust to the environment. Adjustment means adjusting with the work culture of the university or college. Every place has its own work culture, and of course most of them tend to differ. This is something which you can achieve with a great deal of practice.

4. Deal with personal issues - most of the time when you are at university your personal life won't go as you expected it to. You should solve any potential personal issues as quickly as possible as these will affect your academic studies; talking to a friend or university counselor may help.

5. Know the system - having knowledge of what the different rules and regulations are in your university is an advantage. Although some of the literature may be boring to read you should be aware of what the GPA requirements are and how these are calculated, the submission procedures for different modules, and the different regulations that govern the campus.

6. Time management - you should make a timetable or schedule to make sure that you manage your time as much as possible. Making sure you have enough time for studying will be important, but making sure you have adequate time for drinking and socializing is a must. Setting yourself goals in the future is a clear indication that you see yourself going somewhere, which will aid to your success.

7. Define your goals - having clear goals that define your purpose at university should be a task undertaken by every college student. You want to establish what you want to achieve by studying your degree in an academic institution. You will want to ask yourself a couple of questions: Where do I want to be in 5 years from now? How am I going to get there? What other things do I need to get there? These questions that you answer will help you establish a clear set of objectives that you can use to define your goals.

Concurring these few tips will mean that your time spent at university or college is going to be special and memorable.

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